Cyclone Pam wreaks havoc
Uwen Garae surveys his damaged house Monday in Port Vila, Vanuatu, in the aftermath of Cyclone Pam on Monday. Vanuatu’s President Baldwin Lonsdale said the cyclone, which hammered the tiny South Pacific archipelago over the weekend, was a “monster.”
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — The United Nations reported Monday that 24 people are confirmed dead and 3,300 have been displaced by Cyclone Pam in the South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu.
Radio and telephone communications with hard-hit outer islands were just beginning to be restored today but remained patchy three days after what the country’s president called a “monster” storm.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said 3,300 people are sheltering in 37 evacuation centers on the main island of Efate and in the provinces of Torba and Penama. “Basic emergency rations are being provided to evacuees, including water, rice, tinned fish or meat, coffee, tea, sugar, Milo [chocolate malt powder], biscuits and other items,” the report said.
Relief workers have been battling poor weather and communications problems for days, hampering much of their efforts to reach the outer islands. A break in the weather today gave them a chance to try again, though access still remained difficult. Most of the islands have no airports, and those that do have only small landing strips that are tricky for large supply planes to navigate.
Teams of aid workers and government officials were planning to fly to the southern islands, including Tanna Island, which suffered a direct hit from the storm. The teams were expected to meet with local disaster officials and conduct damage assessments, said Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, disaster coordinator for the U.N.’s humanitarian affairs office.
Some of the islands were just beginning to get their phone networks running again, and technical crews were en route to set up data and voice satellite communications. Officials hoped to restore communications to the islands within 48 hours, Stampa said.
President Baldwin Lonsdale said Cyclone Pam destroyed or damaged 90 percent of the buildings in the capital alone. Lonsdale was interviewed Monday in Sendai, in northeastern Japan, where he had been attending a U.N. disaster conference when the cyclone struck. He was expected to reach Vanuatu today.
Lonsdale said because of a breakdown in communications infrastructure, even he could not reach his family. “We do not know if our families are safe or not. As the leader of the nation, my whole heart is for the people, the nation,” he said.
Vanuatu has a population of 267,000 people. About 47,000 people live in the capital.
Officials in Vanuatu were struggling to determine the scale of devastation from the cyclone, which tore through the nation early Saturday packing winds of 168 miles per hour. Bridges were down outside the capital, Port Vila, making travel by vehicle impossible even around Efate.
The damaged airport in Port Vila has reopened, allowing some aid and relief flights to reach the country.
The city’s hospital was overwhelmed with patients, and some beds were moved outside due to fears that the building is no longer safe.
“The wards have all been evacuated because of structural damage,” surgeon Richard Leona told Australia’s Channel 7. “We are badly needing this help. We need to get an urgent drug supply and food and also set up a mobile hospital to deal with the influx of patients coming in.”